1 Purpose

The following is a report comparing asthma patients EMR recorded exacerbations from March - September 2018, March - September 2019 and March - September 2020. The population was restricted to 279,541 patients from 271 practices that had an audit date after Sept. 2020.


2 Population Selection


3 Overall Exacerbation Rates

Exacerbation rates were comapred using patient’s EMR looking at March - September 2018, March - September 2019 and March - September 2020. These are split into 3 categories, each containing patients that have had at least 1 of the following:

  • Asthma exacerbation
    • Explicit asthma coded exacerbation
    • Acute OCS prescription
    • Hospital admission

The average and standard deviation has also been caluculated for these categories.

Measure March - Sept. 2020 Average March - Sept. 2019 Average March - Sept. 2018 Average March - Sept. 2020 Standard Deviation March - Sept. 2019 Standard Deviation March - Sept. 2018 Standard Deviation
COPD Exacerbation 0.24 0.37 0.59 0.68 1.02 1.44
Acute OCS 0.18 0.27 0.40 0.64 1.01 1.45
Hospital Admissions 0.07 0.12 0.22 0.28 0.44 0.64
Explicit COPD Exacerbation Code 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.03 0.03

4 Asthma Exacerbation Rates

This section breaks down the total number of asthma exacerbations by frequency.


4.1 Explicit Code for Asthma Exacerbation

The following sections break down the frequencies of each of the total number of asthma exacerbations parts: explicit coding, acute OCS, and hospital admissions


4.2 Acute OCS Prescriptions


4.3 Hosptial Admissions